“Nish, Sandus, and Ryder watch the perimeter. Alert me if any fae draw near. I’ll cloak her, but I don’t want anyone near this area.”
“Yes, my prince.” They all dipped their heads.
When they took to the skies and retreated to the edges of the field, I planted my hands akimbo. “Do you ever grow tired of bossing fae around all day?”
“When it involves banishing a male who’s looking at you in a way I don’t particularly care for? No.” He gave me his back, and I got an eyeful of his wings tucked in tight just as his statement struck me.
“What in all the realm does that mean?”
He stalked away, then crouched near something black in the snow.
I approached him and rubbed my arms. My tunic was thick, but it didn’t fully alleviate the chill. “Who were you referring to?”
“Never mind,” he said gruffly. He waved toward the black item, and when I joined him, I realized it was the withered remains of a wheat stalk. A very dead wheat stalk. “This is all that remains of what once grew here. This entire hillside used to be cropland. Some of our finest wheat came from this area. Now, it produces nothing.”
My fingers encircled the plant as my other hand drifted to the soil beneath the layers of snow. I had to burrow under a thin coating of ice at the bottom, and when my palm met frozen dirt, I searched for a hum that orem existed within this land. Nothing greeted me. I closed my eyes, searching for that pulse that always accompanied the fields.
Silence.
“There’s no orem here,” the prince said quietly.
My lips parted as the implication of what that truly meant took hold of me.
The prince was right.
We would all starve.
I withdrew my hand, shaking. “What you’re asking of me is impossible.”
“It’s not. I know you can do this.”
His eyes were so vivid, so blue, and such stark honesty shone from them that for a moment, I ached for his words to be true. I wished I could be who he wanted me to be. I wished I knew how.
“I have no idea how to make this field thrive again.”
“What did you do in the courtyard?”
“That’s just it. I didn’t do anything, not really. I just cleaned the snow from the plants, fingered the dead stalks, felt the dried bark. The orem appeared on its own on day three, just a tiny flutter of it, and then it grew.”
“Perhaps your presence alone creates it. Or your touch.”
“Is that how affinities work?”
“Affinities can work in many ways. Some are entirely unique.”
“But how do I learn mine?”
His eyes softened. “The first thing you need to do is trust yourself. Believe that you’re capable. Once you do that, you’ll start to become more aware of the subtle nuances that accompany your magic. Self-awareness is key to mastering one’s affinity.”
“Is that what you did?”
He sat down, crossing his legs in the snow as though the cold didn’t bother him. “I did. When I first manifested, I was like you—powerful, but my tutors had expected as much given my lineage, and I’d been prepared not to meddle with it until I was past the initial stage.” He shook his head. “Telling a fairy of thirteen not to test his limits is one thing, but to actually hold myself back . . . That was something else entirely.”
I sat on the ground too, but far enough away from him that our knees wouldn’t bump. “So you always knew you were going to be strong?”
He shrugged. “I’d been told my entire life that I would be. I was born on the triple lunar eclipse, at the cusp of that great and rare event. A powerful seer said it was a sign of what I was to become.”
I frowned. “Wasn’t that the event that unleashed a magical shockwave that killed thousands of fae?”
“It was. Fitting, I suppose, considering what my strongest affinity became.”
The ability to suck souls. Nobody had ever heard of the prince’s affinity prior to him. It was well known that his ability was unrivaled on the continent simply because there was no one else who could do it.
“And how did you grow your affinity?”
He pointed toward the soil. “I started with believing that I could.”
The prince stayed at my side throughout the morning, his presence steady and strong. Gentle pushes of his aura frequently drifted around me—as if his power was constantly releasing from his body.
As the day passed, I cleared snow from the dead plants, touched the withered leaves, sank my fingers into the dirt, and let myself drift to that soft place that I always traveled to when I was working in my garden or laboring in the fields.
Breathe. Touch. Feel. Give. The dirt was dry, cold, and hard, but I’d spent full seasons feeling the soil between my fingers, and I knew with the right amount of tending, it would loosen and soak in moisture.
I hummed as I worked, and even though I didn’t have my tools and was unable to churn the crops or turn over the lifeless vegetation, I didn’t worry about that.
At the prince’s insistence, I allowed my mind to wander. Before long, I was singing as I swept snow to the side and wiggled my fingers around lifeless roots. I had no idea if what I was doing would help, but I treated the dead field as I would any other, with loving touches and soothing words.
I grew so lost in the aura of the land around me that it wasn’t until the prince touched my shoulder that I stopped.
“We must go, Ilara.” His tone was soft, and when I met his stare, raw emotion was in his eyes. With a blink, it was gone, but I only grew more flustered when I saw that all four of his guards surrounded us.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Near evening.”
“I’ve been doing this all day?”
“You have.”
My heart beat harder since the time felt as though it’d vanished in the blink of an eye. Around us, areas of the field were now bare as piles of snow sat to the side. Withered crops lay exposed to the elements, and footprints littered the land.
“Do you think my being here helped?”
His lips curved. “I think it did something.”
I cocked my head, but he didn’t allude further.
“I must meet with Barvilum’s council before we return to Solisarium,” he said. “We must go.”
The sun hung low in the sky. It’d grown much later than I’d been aware.
The prince opened his arms, and I stepped into them. A surging jolt buzzed through me when we made contact, but it was only when he pushed from the ground and into the skies that I realized how easily I’d stepped into his embrace. As though I trusted him.
My brow furrowed as he flew us toward the town. I didn’t trust him. There was no way I could possibly feel that for the male who’d taken so much from me.
CHAPTER 19
The small city of Barvilum sat at the edge of the Tala Sea. Homes lined in faded sea wood with thick glass windows overlooked the rolling ocean. Salt filled the air, and I inhaled the tangy fragrance as the prince landed us on the cobblestone streets of the small city center.
The city council’s building sat near the wharf, and a crowd had gathered. A tall male fairy with exceptionally pointy ears and spindly legs stood at the building’s front door, several steps up from the crowd. He kept waving his hands, and from a distance it looked as though he was trying to quiet the crowd.